I wonder if any of the more scientifically minded people on here could help me, please.

[Horsa]

Before I read the information that Chris supplied & get up-to-date with Chris's & MrZz's conversation as well as give Chris a proper answer I'll ask the couple of questions I was going to ask.

 

[Horsa]

We all know that waves & energy have to be in sync with each other outside animals & people. I've been reading something that says this also happens inside animals & people too. I know how it happens outside living beings but does it really happen inside living beings & if so, how?

 

[Horsa]

We all know that computers only know a language of 0's & 1's behind the graphical user interface which makes everything understandable to us. With that in mind, how would our computer say "Hello! How are you?"

 

[Horsa]

Very interesting to look at this relic and figure out how little people new about convalescent electrons that determine chemical properties of elements displayed therein. The groups (I through VIII) are not determined by convalescent properties but by the number of bonds with hydrogen (RH or hydrydes) and oxygen (RO or oxides) where R is the element in question. Even back then, people must have known (Mendeleev first) that H binds to 1 chemical bond O binds to 2 chemical bonds, and arranged everything vertically according to number of bonds. E.g. group IV are elements forming RH4 and RO2 substances. Interestingly some elements are in two groups, because multiple oxides exists. E.g. copper: both Cu2O & CuO4 exists. Same with others of this group of best electricity conductors: Ag & Au. BTW, the reason they are such good conductors is the large number of convalescent electrons. O itself is in group VI (by virtue of OH2 substance - water) and H is in group I (reciprocally H2O), but there are no noble gases there because back then, it must have been a puzzle why noble gasses don't react with H nor O.
So it was quite remarkable they categorised all elements they knew into groups similar to those in modern table. They placed alkalines correctly. They mixed metaloids & non-metals into the metals but there was no way to definitely separate them as electricity/heat conduction was not defining property of metals.
Also note the quite accurate atomic masses in the table. But heavier elements become less accurate, with uranium displayed as U240 rather than U238. Still very impressive piece of science given they knew nothing about atomic structure and must have used very mysterious (to me) method of measuring the atomic mass because mass spectrometer was unknown back then
https://www.livescience.com/20581-weigh-atom.html

The information you provided is fascinating. Thank you very much for sharing. Chemistry has indeed progressed big time from that day to this but if we find that impressive we can only imagine how much chemistry must have progressed from its roots in alchemy (interesting how you mentioned Au which is gold) which was caused by men trying to find a way to make normal metal into gold & discover the elixir of life. That must indeed be mighty impressive. The people who came up with all this information with hardly anything if anything at all were amazing. I just don't know how they did it.

 

[mrzz]

The history of science is fascinating though especially when it comes to medical history. It's pretty hard to imagine that people once believed that Galen's theory of circulation was the true theory of circulation.

But this is the thing about science's history. In general we take things out of context, explain older theories in light of current knowledge, and often old science simply looks like silly science, and I guarantee you that there is nothing more far away from truth than this.

Scientific knowledge, even "old" scientific knowledge from times where disciplines were not even nearly as organized as they are know, is always within a given context. In all cases, when you understand and know the context, you see that "old" theories are much "wiser" than they seem at first.

Greek physics is a good example. When we take some isolated phrases out of context, it seems quite naive (association of force and velocity, for example). However, we usually read those things thinking about "force" in Newtonian terms, and then obviously things become problematic. If you try to put "force" (in fact in general they used other words) into context, you see that it all makes much more sense than it seems at first.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

I've just seen this & thought that it would be interesting to know how you think this is going to affect us. I'm going to be a busy bee as it's something else to be discussing & I owe Chris a proper answer yet.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/tech...s-what-we-know/ar-BBSCqjf?ocid=spartanntp_edu

How do you think this event is going to affect us?

This is not going to affect anyone at all. It's just a curiosity science at this point. Meteorite impact is better visible on blue moon, so amateur astronomer noticed one. That's pretty much the whole summary.
I personally was affected by a typo in the article that confused a hell my understanding of what really happened. The article says:
"the space rock was about the size of a football, and that it left a crater around six miles across"
I read it (subconsciously) as:
"the space rock was about the size of a football, and that it left a crater around six metres across"
because the scale of the object vs. the impact site must match. Then I pondered: no way such a minuscule impact could be seen with amateur instruments from 300 Mm away! Then I reread the original statement throwing away my logical thinking and concentrating on the original words. I noticed they said "miles", and the bogosity of their statement, because the scales of the object vs. the impact site are so widely different. Finally I noticed the author is likely American so probably she did not mean to use "meters" [sic], so she indeed wanted to say "miles". So I concluded the word "field" is missing in her sentence, which likely should be:
"the space rock was about the size of a football field, and that it left a crater around six miles across"
where a scale of object vs. impact site is about the same as in my original understanding, just enlarged 1600 times.
So, a stupid error confused the critical fact the article was trying to report, thus created cognitive confusion in my mind. Proofreaders of such articles should also be trained to pay attention to the overall sense of the text and not just punctuation. Otherwise, it's very annoying when the article does not make sense. Even worse: an article can become useless if the key piece of information is messed up as in this case.
EDIT: I was still unsure if I was right about the relative scale of these things, but I finally confirmed my understanding is spot on by reading this article (sorry, the earlier link was wrong, now corrected):
https://www.spaceanswers.com/solar-system/why-do-some-meteorites-create-such-huge-craters/
"Barringer Crater [...] has a diameter of almost a mile (1.6 kilometres) across, was made by a chunk of space rock about 0.02 to 0.03 miles (30 to 50 metres) in diameter"

 

[Horsa]

But this is the thing about science's history. In general we take things out of context, explain older theories in light of current knowledge, and often old science simply looks like silly science, and I guarantee you that there is nothing more far away from truth than this.

Scientific knowledge, even "old" scientific knowledge from times where disciplines were not even nearly as organized as they are know, is always within a given context. In all cases, when you understand and know the context, you see that "old" theories are much "wiser" than they seem at first.

Greek physics is a good example. When we take some isolated phrases out of context, it seems quite naive (association of force and velocity, for example). However, we usually read those things thinking about "force" in Newtonian terms, and then obviously things become problematic. If you try to put "force" (in fact in general they used other words) into context, you see that it all makes much more sense than it seems at first.

Definitely. I'd agree. I think it would be very hard not to do this though. We'd have to look at everything with what some people term beginner's brain & go back to the start & learn everything from scratch starting with the oldest theories working to the new ones with a critical stance. Our minds don't like letting go of information though unless we really don't want to forget something & they tend to kick in if you decide to unlearn & relearn everything. They end up telling you that what you learnt before was right & what you're learning now is rubbish.

I agree with you to a point but I'd use herbalism as medicine as an example & some of those old herbs have been proven to work like blackcurrants for colds & flu.

 

[Horsa]

This is not going to affect anyone at all. It's just a curiosity science at this point. Meteorite impact is better visible on blue moon, so amateur astronomer noticed one. That's pretty much the whole summary.
I personally was affected by a typo in the article that confused a hell my understanding of what really happened. The article says:
"the space rock was about the size of a football, and that it left a crater around six miles across"
I read it (subconsciously) as:
"the space rock was about the size of a football, and that it left a crater around six metres across"
because the scale of the object vs. the impact site must match. Then I pondered: no way such a minuscule impact could be seen with amateur instruments from 300 Mm away! Then I reread the original statement throwing away my logical thinking and concentrating on the original words. I noticed they said "miles", and the bogosity of their statement, because he scales of the object vs. the impact site are so widely different. Finally I noticed the author is likely American so probably she did not mean to use "meters" [sic], so she indeed wanted to say "miles". So I concluded the word "field" is missing in her sentence, which likely should be:
"the space rock was about the size of a football field, and that it left a crater around six miles across"
where a scale of object vs. impact site is about the same as in my original understanding, just enlarged 1600 times.
So, a stupid error confused the critical fact the article was trying to report, thus created cognitive confusion in my mind. Proofreaders of such articles should also be trained to pay attention to the overall sense of the text and not just punctuation. Otherwise, it's very annoying when the article does not make sense. Even worse article can become useless if the key piece of information is messed up as in this case.

Thank you very much for your information. I'll have another look.

In some places they still use miles. In Britain we still use miles on motorway signs or when mentioning speeds but we use metres to measure curtains.

Proof-readers need to pay more attention in general in my opinion. I can think of a good recent example. I was reading Emma the last 2 weeks. In the version of Emma I've been reading "choose" was spelt "chuse", "sofa" was spelt "sopha" & "stayed" was spelt "staid" to name just a few of the spelling errors. I finished reading the book thinking I could have done a better job proof-reading.

 

[Horsa]

I get it, Chris. It won't affect us because it happens once a week or so. People don't realise it because it doesn't normally get mentioned. The questions should be why has it suddenly got mentioned now & why was it never mentioned before. I didn't see that part before.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

I get it, Chris. It won't affect us because it happens once a week or so. People don't realise it because it doesn't normally get mentioned. The questions should be why has it suddenly got mentioned now & why was it never mentioned before. I didn't see that part before.

I have said implicitly why this event got mentioned now and not earlier. Because most of the astronomical phenomena are much easier to observe and quantify during eclipse events. Remember how we talked herein above about how distance is measured in astronomy using parallax and triangulation techniques? E.g a distance to Sun & Venus was measured accurately for the first time using diurnal parallax. But to get precise position of Venus on the sky, it's no coincidence that the measure was taken during a transit of Venus across the sun (i.e. mini-solar eclipse). All sorts of astronomical things are easier to observe and measure during various eclipse events and this one is a rather obvious example.
BTW: further details about the frequency of meteorite impacts should be clarified. The impact of this size (football field rock) happens once a week or so on moon only. As a side note I'm surprised it be so frequently, I'm not interested in verifying it but it might be an exaggeration. But I digress. On Earth however, the every meteorite of similar size is burnt completely by the atmosphere before reaching the surface. Only occasionally (once in 10y or so) we get the reports of sizeable piece (maybe few m) reaching the Earth surface. Such piece must have come from the original meteorite few times bigger than the one in question here. So the atmosphere is a very effective and wonderful protection of our planet against almost all stray cosmic debris (big hits with a potential to disrupt life can happen very rarely - once every 100My or so). Just like Van Allen belt is a wonderful protection against deadly radiation. Again, there exists radiation events of levels Van Allen belt cannot cope with (e.g. supernova) but there is no way such event can happen within the required proximity of 100 parsecs or so.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

We all know that computers only know a language of 0's & 1's behind the graphical user interface which makes everything understandable to us. With that in mind, how would our computer say "Hello! How are you?"

Very easy to answer: it's not computer but the programmer who says your quote. Computer is just a dead piece of junk that does not do anything by itself. Programmer just chose to say your quote by encoding it in a form of binary data and computer program that is executed when you type a command on your keyboard and displays message on your screen. Similarly to a postcard that shows something or plays something once you open it. Different technology (say snail mail instead of e-mail/web page, screen instead of paper) but the same concept & effect.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

We all know that waves & energy have to be in sync with each other outside animals & people. I've been reading something that says this also happens inside animals & people too. I know how it happens outside living beings but does it really happen inside living beings & if so, how?

I don't understand what kind of "wave" and "energy" you're talking about here, so cannot answer this effectively. Energy "inside animals & people" is the energy from burning carbohydrates, i.e. oxidising them to CO2 & H2O. Reciprocally, plants are building carbohydrates by reducing CO2 into them (with help of water and sun's energy), which closes the natural carbon cycle. Everything is in balance, with sun providing energy to circulate said carbon around.

 

[Horsa]

I have said implicitly why this event got mentioned now and not earlier. Because most of the astronomical phenomena are much easier to observe and quantify during eclipse events. Remember how we talked herein above about how distance is measured in astronomy using parallax and triangulation techniques? E.g a distance to Sun & Venus was measured accurately for the first time using diurnal parallax. But to get precise position of Venus on the sky, it's no coincidence that the measure was taken during a transit of Venus across the sun (i.e. mini-solar eclipse). All sorts of astronomical things are easier to observe and measure during various eclipse events and this one is a rather obvious example.
BTW: further details about the frequency of meteorite impacts should be clarified. The impact of this size (football field rock) happens once a week or so on moon only. As a side note I'm surprised it be so frequently, I'm not interested in verifying it but it might be an exaggeration. But I digress. On Earth however, the every meteorite of similar size is burnt completely by the atmosphere before reaching the surface. Only occasionally (once in 10y or so) we get the reports of sizeable piece (maybe few m) reaching the Earth surface. Such piece must have come from the original meteorite few times bigger than the one in question here. So the atmosphere is a very effective and wonderful protection of our planet against almost all stray cosmic debris (big hits with a potential to disrupt life can happen very rarely - once every 100My or so). Just like Van Allen belt is a wonderful protection against deadly radiation. Again, there exists radiation events of levels Van Allen belt cannot cope with (e.g. supernova) but there is no way such event can happen within the required proximity of 100 parsecs or so.

I didn't see that. I do remember that.

I was surprised to & realise it might be an exaggeration.

 

[Horsa]

Very easy to answer: it's not computer but the programmer who says your quote. Computer is just a dead piece of junk that does not do anything by itself. Programmer just chose to say your quote by encoding it in a form of binary data and computer program that is executed when you type a command on your keyboard and displays message on your screen. Similarly to a postcard that shows something or plays something once you open it. Different technology (say snail mail instead of e-mail/web page, screen instead of paper) but the same concept & effect.

What exactly is "Hello! How are you?" in binary code though?

 

[Horsa]

I don't understand what kind of "wave" and "energy" you're talking about here, so cannot answer this effectively. Energy "inside animals & people" is the energy from burning carbohydrates, i.e. oxidising them to CO2 & H2O. Reciprocally, plants are building carbohydrates by reducing CO2 into them (with help of water and sun's energy), which closes the natural carbon cycle. Everything is in balance, with sun providing energy to circulate said carbon around.

I know that. I meant something completely different but will re-read the book later & maybe get a better reading. I got a different reading of the meaning which appeared to make more sense with what was said in the book.

 

[Horsa]

I'm very sorry, Chris. You mis-read my questions because I didn't phrase them correctly. I didn't phrase my questions correctly because I had to think about & write about something unpleasant while reading the book. Some of the book was fascinating & pleasant but other parts weren't. It was my fault, not yours. We're all friends here. We're allowed to make mistakes, learn from them, say we don't know something. We're only human. We're not infallible.

I re-read the book. It meant that for a living being to be at peace brainwaves & soundwaves, mental, physical & vocal energies all have to be in sync.

 

[mrzz]

Computer is just a dead piece of junk that does not do anything by itself.

If there is contest for "phrase of the year" that is my vote.

 

[Horsa]

If there is contest for "phrase of the year" that is my vote.

I agree. However, with some people's maths skills & ability to remember things today you'd be forgiven for thinking that some people allow computers to do their philosophising for them meaning I've known a few people who'd be lost without a computer to tell them everything & calculate & spell things for them. They just either can't or won't think for themselves. I remember having to do a spell-checker exercise in word processing where I had to type out this paragraph which was full of spelling mistakes & I corrected the mistakes myself & typed them out but was told to delete everything as I had to prove I could use a spell-checker so I had to repeat the exercise. I also remember on my 1st spreadsheet lesson & I calculated the answers on paper & typed them in the boxes myself & I ended up having to delete the numbers & put the formulae in. On my 1st internet & e-mail lesson we had to find information about something I knew so I ended up typing what I already knew & had to delete everything & look for the information. When I was younger research was done by searching for hours & reading books & taking notes of the important parts. Nowadays all people have to do is type questions into ask or words into google & they get a lot of information. If they're lazy they just copy & paste into documents instead of writing things down. I'm not going to turn into a google brain. I prefer the old method. I won't pretend to be someone I'm not. I prefer to work from memory. I don't mind admitting I don't know things. If people think I'm stupid because of it, that's their choice.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

I agree. However, with some people's maths skills & ability to remember things today you'd be forgiven for thinking that some people allow computers to do their philosophising for them meaning I've known a few people who'd be lost without a computer to tell them everything & calculate & spell things for them. They just either can't or won't think for themselves. I remember having to do a spell-checker exercise in word processing where I had to type out this paragraph which was full of spelling mistakes & I corrected the mistakes myself & typed them out but was told to delete everything as I had to prove I could use a spell-checker so I had to repeat the exercise. I also remember on my 1st spreadsheet lesson & I calculated the answers on paper & typed them in the boxes myself & I ended up having to delete the numbers & put the formulae in. On my 1st internet & e-mail lesson we had to find information about something I knew so I ended up typing what I already knew & had to delete everything & look for the information. When I was younger research was done by searching for hours & reading books & taking notes of the important parts. Nowadays all people have to do is type questions into ask or words into google & they get a lot of information. If they're lazy they just copy & paste into documents instead of writing things down. I'm not going to turn into a google brain. I prefer the old method. I won't pretend to be someone I'm not. I prefer to work from memory. I don't mind admitting I don't know things. If people think I'm stupid because of it, that's their choice.

I think you still ascribe too much anthropomorphism to computers, even after having read my "phrase of the year". It's not that computer does the math for you (when you enter a formulae into excel spreadsheet), but rather you rely on a programmer who created such useful piece of technology as excel to help you make the calculation, so that you save time. Similarly, google is not the equivalent of your brain, but simply a useful tool over a large database that ingenious google engineers developed for you to remember things that you might have forgotten and you don't have time to dig out the information from archives on paper.
Here is a very important distinction: my brain tells me what I want to learn and how to learn it. Google search engine is my sub-servant and my brain tells it what to do, the opposite is never true: google never tells me what to do.
It's OK (and admirable) when you can do most things computer programs do (such as excel calculations) but you will never be able to do complex calculations done by sophisticated algorithms, so you must rely on the results of said algorithms. And the amount of data processed by these algorithms will be too big for your brain to digest. So you must rely on the programmers who created the sophisticated algorithms, and you must rely on google to find data, because that's the way world is moving: most data is kept electronically and not on paper anymore.
About the computer usefulness: excel spreadsheet is not a tool to check your calculator skills. It is the tool to calculate an outcome, given input data. Just like any computer program really. You learn that a given program does useful thing with your data and u remember that useful feature. Next time when you have different data, you remember said useful tool, so you enter your data into that tool and you get the quick answer. Inn case of excel, you enter different numbers in the "ordinary cells" (usually not manually but with help of other program) and your formulae cell calculates the expression. You don't need to repeat the calculation of the formulae for new data. That's the essence of excel's usefulness, and your teachers were likely stupid by not explaining it to you. The same usefulness principle applies to all computer programs: they are here to help you with your tasks such as calculations, information retrieval, document writing, analysis, and many many others.

 

[Chris Koziarz]

I squeeze this archaeology news herein (following the discussion of the GPR and other archaeological tools and science behind them) because it's an interesting case.
One of the most famous Brit explorers (Matthew Flinders) well known down under here, grand-father of Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, who invented archaeology as we know it today, was a poor ex-convict who died young and was buried in literally a common graveyard. The graveyard was sitting virtually intact as an open public land and thought of as a memorial, and everything looked OK.
Sadly, someone came in and decided the park and the graveyard below it must be annihilated by a rail development project (paradoxically led by an Australian group Lendlease). So the brit archs are scrambling to find Matthew Flinders' remains, because the remains represent invaluable cultural heritage for both countries. Despite all the technology his grand-son helped to build, Matthew Flinders' body is difficult to find and may not be timely found.

I am pleased to announce the news that Flinders' body was found!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-25/matthew-flinders-remains-discovered-london/10748938
Good work brit arch guys! I thought they had been digging in vain but it turned out very useful. They've just saved a big piece of history and cultural heritage for both countries. Priceless result!
If you don't know the meaning of the word Serendipity, this is a perfect example: a happy outcome by chance. They found Flinders by a stroke of serendipity.